His name is Bob Sang.

He's not from Macon, Middle Georgia or even this state, but you know him.

He's a high school football coach. Or was until he decided to retire last week after 50 - yes 50 - years on the sidelines.

The fact the school from which he retired is in Huntington, W.Va. is inconsequential because he could just as well have been the coach at Central or Warner Robins or Bleckley County or your high school when your were 17.

Bob Sang was my football coach at Huntington East High School nearly 30 years ago. And although I probably had a dozen coaches in my life and have had contact with a few hundred others as a sports writer, he's the only one I call "Coach."

A coach is usually a boy's first contact with a disciplinarian outside the home, and for many of us it's a football coach. He's the authority figure not for just his football team, but the whole school. Who was more intimidating, your principal or your football coach?

But under that tough exterior was a personality that enabled him to scold you and your girlfriend for being too cozy at your locker before morning home room, then wink and come up with a line to make you blush with embarrassment as he walked away smiling.

He also was a motivator, getting more out of you than you ever thought you had in you at just the right time. Sometimes using that intimidating presence, but just as often a simple statement like "you know you're better than that."

I played center and placekicker. In the last game of my junior year, I snapped the ball over the punter's head, and it led to a touchdown for our crosstown rival.

At halftime, he asked me in front of my teammates if I needed somebody else to do my job in the second half. It was the only bad snap I had in three years.

Most of all, though, my football coach was a teacher. And his lessons weren't limited to positions on the field, the Xs and Os in a playbook or the American history classes he taught half the day.

You learned life from Bob Sang, and he knew a lot about it. He fought in World War II, put himself through college after the war and lost a kidney when shot as a security guard while chasing down an intruder.

You learned the importance of teamwork. "You get to know a lot about trust when you're in a foxhole with somebody," he often told us. He taught you how to handle success with class, defeat with dignity and be a good sport no matter the treatment you received from your opponent.

He also helped me and two of my teammates deal with death. In the span of a month, I lost my father, another player lost his mother, and another lost a brother. When I walked into his office a few days after my dad's funeral, Coach was there with a strong hand on a shoulder and words of encouragement, and then a hug before I left to return to the locker room.

Bob Sang never won a state championship as a head coach. He came within a win of playing for one a couple of times, even as recently as 1999. That proves the pass plays from the unbalanced line of the wing-T we used in the early '70s were ahead of their time, but still pretty efficient today for a 75-year-old coach and his group of 15- to 18-year-old players.

Sadly, "Coach" lost his final game last Friday, but he still went out a winner.

The few thousand players he helped mold into men the past five decades attest to that.

Rick Nolte is Sports editor of The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph. Reach him at 744-4401 or e-mail to rnolte@macontel.com.